As I read through Anjum Katyal’s Badal Sircar: Towards a Theatre of Conscience, it seemed to me that all the ideas I have had floating in my mind about the meaning of my own work in theatre — which I could never manage to properly articulate — were formulated beautifully by Badal Sircar in his lifetime of dedication to the art of theatre. I refer, in particular, to the idea that theatre can act as part of a movement to bring about a change in the socio-political-economic status quo through cultural action. Tehrik-i-Niswan, my own theatre group, was, and is, highly influenced by India’s Nukkad Natak movement, which followed from Sircar’s practice and the concept of cultural intervention through performance arts.

The manner in which Katyal has approached her subject is perhaps the best way to convey the greatness of the personality and genius of Sircar. Her book is not just well-written, well-researched and accurate, but it follows Sircar’s life and work with great love and honesty; tracing his life, thoughts and accomplishments in the field of theatre.

Sircar (1925-2011) was probably the most influential, daring, controversial dramatist and theatre personality of the Indian subcontinent. As Katyal puts it: “His was theatre as anti-establishment counterculture, challenging normative middle-class mores and complacency, an attempt at conscientisation and awareness-raising, protest and political comment. It drew on the daily reality of the common man, the entire gamut of oppression, corruption, injustice, power politics, struggle, disillusionment, despairing hope, battered idealism and confused questioning that all of us experience as we grapple with the everyday.”

Anjum Katyal’s well-researched study gives insight into the life and work of Badal Sircar and highlights the need for Third Theatre in contemporary society

Reading Katyal’s book introduces the many facets of Sircar. As a playwright, his plays were phenomenally different from what had been written earlier. There is humour and wit, along with a preoccupation with social issues, including the injustice and inequality faced by women and the poor, violence, war, and nuclearisation. His plays raised questions about the status quo. His texts have become milestones in the history of written theatre; his plays are not only performed in all languages of the subcontinent, but have also been translated into many other languages, and are performed all over the world. He used an interesting form, in which the protagonist might address members of the audience directly.

As a director, he pioneered a new form of theatre which has come to be known as ‘Third Theatre’. He rejected the known form of ‘city theatre’, the proscenium stage and the auditorium, sets and spotlights; the theatre he saw as “imported from Britain more than a century ago”. Since this kind of theatre cost a lot of money, he felt that what India needed was the concept of ‘poor theatre’. In a sense, this was going back to traditional forms of folk theatre, where the performers came from poor classes and could not possibly afford expensive sets, lights, costumes etc. So, he said, we must learn to use our imagination and the imagination of the audience: “Our group was poor, so are our countrymen, but we wanted to utilise poverty and turn it into an advantage instead of allowing it to be a restriction”. In a nutshell, Katyal explains: “There is a dichotomy between the existing rural, folk, traditional theatre (which is the First Theatre) and the Western-influenced, proscenium stage of the city theatre (which is the Second Theatre); his attempt is to explore the possibility of a synthesis between these two — a Third Theatre.” Two important features of Third Theatre are direct personalised addresses to the audience, and inciting the spectator to come to a moral decision — leading to action.

As a theorist, Sircar felt that theatre is a human act where the performer and the spectator make contact in a given place at a specific moment — through this contact, anything can happen in that moment. For this, the physical barriers of distance, levels and lights had to be removed. Direct contact and immediacy was of utmost importance to him. He felt that the viewer must be part of the performance. In order to fulfil his aim of eye contact with the audience, Sircar broke down the barriers between the urban city based proscenium theatre and traditional village based folk theatre. He also aimed to awaken the consciousness of the masses.

“Badal-da insists, despite the emphasis on feelings and communicating emotion, that the importance of intellect is not being belittled: ‘Knowledge without feelings makes one pedantic, as feelings without knowledge can put one in an ivory tower or send one to the mountains to meditate. The integration of knowledge and feelings is what can be called consciousness, and it is consciousness that can induce and guide any meaningful action that can in turn change the world for the better. We know that people in this world die of starvation, that people are tortured behind prison walls, that the planet earth can be destroyed totally by a minute fraction of the stockpile of nuclear weapons: all this is knowledge. But unless we feel the full import of that knowledge, we do not take action.’ This, then, is the core of the politics of his theatre: to create an emotional impact strong enough to be translated into action, into taking a stance. Not intellect alone, not ideas and information alone, but experience, feeling, alongside.To sum up the salient features of his Third Theatre, it is a ‘way of communication directly in theatre, thereby utilising the strength of this live art form’; it is ‘flexible, portable and inexpensive theatre — a free theatre’ no longer dependent on the money required for the ‘costly inessentials of the proscenium theatre’. It can be both an intimate theatre, where ‘intense emotional communication’ is possible, and an outdooor theatre that travels to the people. ‘Both these theatres can be free in principle as well as in effect, for they can function on the basis of voluntary donation ... principally, because a human act like theatre should let people meet freely on the basis of equal status so that their relationship can be human.’ It is a theatre concerned with impacting social change, making people think and feel deeply about the injustices and inequities in the society they are part of, so that perhaps they will be moved to act for change.” — Excerpt from the book

Katyal’s book makes one understand that the aim of Sircar’s theatre was not experimentation, but exploration. When he realised that proscenium theatre was competing, and losing, against cinema, he decided that theatre must concentrate on what is its own essence, i.e. the human body. “Thus my theatre eschews storytelling, illusionism etc in favour of ritualistic involvement of the audiences as participants,” he declared. In this amazing way, theatre becomes a kind of communication in which one both knows and is compelled to feel. More than aesthetic response, it is the theatre of mass communication.

Katyal writes that Sircar did not believe in commercialising his art and his work, and quotes him: “I do not think that the commercial relationship of customer and seller is conducive to theatre. We normally pass the hat round for voluntary donations, and this collection is not for ‘private property’ but for survival. True communication is only possible in such a free theatre, where there are no obligations on either side: the actor is not obliged to entertain because he is being paid, nor is the spectator obliged to pay.” I do wish more theatre practitioners were inspired by his ideas.

Sircar has left behind a solid body of work: play texts, theoretical writings and a whole new pedagogy of theatre. He wanted his theatre to be representative of people’s desires and experiences; to be with them and among them. “Our audience is basically the villager, the peasant and the worker so we try and take actions from their reality and give it a theatrical form. Our aim is to reflect their problems through our physical being without the help of any mechanical device.”

It is impossible to not be excited by Anjum Katyal’s text on the seminal Badal Sircar, or not be inspired by his work. Just as he donated his body as a resource for science, he has left for us his theory and practice as a resource for the future of social movements. The book is a highly recommended read for theatre practitioners here in Pakistan, too. Sircar offered a new form of theatre, as a potent weapon in the hands of the common person, to fight against injustice and exploitation.

The reviewer is a theatre practitioner based in Karachi and founder of Tehrik-i-Niswan Cultural Action Group. She has taught social sciences at various educational institutions in Karachi and has co-edited Gender, Politics and Performance in South Asia.

Badal Sircar: Towards a Theatre of Conscience
(BIOGRAPHY)
By Anjum Katyal
SAGE, India
ISBN: 978-9351503705
308pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, June 5th, 2016